John Hanson Briscoe, retired Md. judge, dies

John Hanson Briscoe, a retired St. Mary's County, Md., Circuit Court judge and former speaker of the Maryland House of Delegates who made historic and environmental preservation central tenets of his career, died Jan. 1 at his home in Hollywood, Md.

He was 79.

The cause was cancer, said his son, John H. Briscoe Jr.

Briscoe was a member of one of the state's oldest families, whose roots in St. Mary's County date to the 17th century. He was a direct descendant of John Hanson, the first president of Congress under the Articles of Confederation. Briscoe's great-grandfather owned the Sotterley Plantation, a 1703 estate and National Historic Landmark in Hollywood.

Briscoe spent much of his early career in politics. In 1962, he was a member of Maryland Sen. Frank Raley's Democratic reform ticket of candidates who ousted the Dorsey family political machine that had run St. Mary's County politics for 25 years.

Briscoe was elected to the Maryland House of Delegates and served as the chairman of several committees, including Environmental Matters and Ways and Means, before being elected speaker in 1973. It had been 109 years since St. Mary's County produced a House speaker, according to the Enterprise, a Southern Maryland newspaper.

In the legislature, he helped oversee the expansion of Point Lookout State Park in Scotland, Md., and the preservation of St. Clements Island, where the English settlers who established the colony of Maryland first landed in 1634. He also helped establish Greenwell State Park in Hollywood and the College of Southern Maryland in La Plata.

He was instrumental in ushering in property tax reform and state civil rights laws.